Thursday, August 23, 2012

Powerpoint is thoroughly edited, as have been the notecards. I am done! Practicing presenting is going to be fun (sarcasm) and I'm sooooo looking forward to presenting tomorrow (more sarcasm). Nerves nerves go away, come again some other day.

I finished all the pictures to find out that I have somehow missed some.... and that I should also look into getting images from the famous Hubble telescope and seeing what these have to offer. Other than that, I finished up the majority of my powerpoint, though I have to finish finding the images and find the proper table to reference before I can truly be done.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Well, I would like to be able to say I worked on my powerpoint today, but alas, I forgot my flashdrive. So I was unable to do anything productive for that! But on the flip side, I finished setting up all my wise comparisons! Still think the images are amazing, just sayin'.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Up to date again! Well, today I worked more on my powerpoint (having to reword and cut down a bit because I realized it was far too in depth and too long). I also started setting up WISE comparisons for the nebulae images that I downloaded. But for the majority of the day I helped Bethany out with her group of VERY young camp children. They got to be quite loud, hyper, and easily distracted, but ultimately they were relatively pleasant and well behaved. Some of the stuff Bethany showed them I myself had actually never seen before and thought was pretty cool. We took apart their film one-use cameras, part of the process being to discharge the capacitor. I (of course), not realizing anything significant would happen when I did so, was the first to touch the metal screwdriver to the capacitor outlet (I can't remember what they're called...). This resulted in a VERY loud shock and quite a few sparks. Most certainly more fun to watch when other people did it than when it gave me a heart attack. Overall a pretty successful day I say!

So! Monday the 13th I finished downloading all the images (Yaaaaay)! I also got a good chunk of my powerpoint for our final presentation on the 24th done. THAT, is scary thing. What's more, the star that we thought contained a central star infrared excess (which would be cool since it is understudied and not well understood), did not show up in further (longer) wavelengths, meaning it far more likely there's just a bunch of hot dust around the star that happens to display IR excess. But once I start looking through this next batch of stars it's very possible I'll find another! I must admit, I still can't get over how cool it is to be the one looking at these images instead of simply getting pictures whenever my grandpa sends me an email about something NASA published. Good stuff!

Though I was out of town this day I was asked to post my answer to challenge number three: Electronically prove your hybridized identity.
Here it is!

Once upon a time...

Just kidding.

Well I'll admit, we certainly started off completely clueless. For the longest time I honestly didn't even know what the goal was. This lead to completely random searches and evidently interesting videos, like such: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZElqfHyjMw. Fascinating as this was, we were prettyyyy sure that was not the solution. Deciding to take the fact that we needed info from the last challenge in mind, we thought maybe we would use third eye for another watermark. With this in mind, we went to the CIS website. Having already figured out that sailvu topcreepin was clearly visual perception, we searched such in the link. The internet hated that, and nothing appeared for whatever reason. So instead, we tried just perception. Lo and behold! We found the page: http://www.cis.rit.edu/nomoregreek! This was clearly the end of the challenge, once we made the image that is. When we went to make sure photoshop was an okay program to use, however, we were informed that we had beat the system! Alas, this in itself was not impressive enough, so we proceeded to attempt to figure out how we were SUPPOSED to get there. Ice mark, the blatant hint, lead us to another watermark program! (this was after the discovery of a random physicsist mountain climber author of course). Oddly enough, finding the image was the hardest park. We had attempted to use the hybrid Bethany-Bob, but it didn't work. With the gracious help of Bethany, however, we realized this was because we weren't creative enough with the settings on the left. Seeing that a key may be necessary, and knowing that we were probably looking for the URL to the page we accidentaly found, I switched the setting to text and tried a few different passwords, butterface and icycle included. Then I realized we had yet to (properly) use the visual perception hint. Excitment making hearts race and adrenaline pumping, my fingers flew over keys to pound in the 17 characters, everyone staring at the screen in anticipation....VIOLA! The key appeared! We had beat the system AND followed the rules to complete the challenge! It was then cake to use photoshop to make the image, a high pass filter was applied to Maddie's face and a gaussian blur to mine. The high pass filter was also set as an overlay, and then merged on top of the gaussian image, creating the beauty that I have attatched for you.

And that is the thrilling and exciting tale of how we completed the challenge.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Today I basically redid everything I did the few days before, because I found the CORRECT radii I was looking for.... yay! aha but it's moving along pretty quickly and I should be done with gathering all these images relatively son. Far more exciting is the discovery from one of my previous infrared images of the rare understudied subjects of excess IR emitting Central Plaentary Nebula Star. This is very cool and previous papers said that due to noise and background bleeds they were unable to take a closer look at xray emissions and whatnot, which shall be my next task because my lab believes they're just pessimists. Cool stuff right there!

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Finished up fitting the radii for the nebulae today, and started downloading all the WISE images. Not really sure that just looking at the pictures and guesstimating the radius was the way I was supposed to do it, but it's a start, we'll see how they come out I guess!
Plus the Mees observatory last night was AMAZING! We got to look at M 57, which is one of the previous nebulae I already downloaded and compared the WISE infrared images for--soo cool!!!!
Day Twentytwo, pabeigt!

Monday, August 6, 2012

I finished up the graphs and tables in whatnot for this set of Planetary nebulae, and discovered that there's around 30 more that I will be doing such for. More pretty pictures? I think yes!
Mees observatory tonight, EXTREMELY excited! I've never really used a telescope, let alone a big fancy observatory. Can't wait!

Thursday, August 2, 2012

I finished downloading images! Yayy! Except some of them are messed up and I have to do them again. Besides that, I'm lining up the 4 WISE bands next to the DSS image and comparing them. Exciting stuff.

Essentially I finished looking at pictures of nebulae and adjusting the radii on the images so I could figure out how big of a mosaic I needed to download. And then I started the wonderful 2 minute-per-image process of downloading. This miiiiight take a while since I have about 140 images to download. Oh well. The pictures are cool looking, that's what counts right?
Day Sixteen, tam!

Monday, July 30, 2012

Totally forgot to blog that day! I enjoy my new project, after calculating a whole bunch of radii, I get to double check with a bajillion pictures of different nebulae that are just plain cool looking. Good stuff.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

I finally got my new project! Yayy! I'm calculating a bunch of radii of nebulae, then getting DSS (optical) images and checking/adjusting radii, then looking at WISE images and then making a comparison of the WISE DSS and Chandra images, and then making a table! Considering how many Nebulae there are, this will certainly take me a while. But I'm not working on the powerpoint anymore, so that's good!

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

All that's left now is to make a mosaic (a bigger image composed of multiple images) to compare to the 5ish degree image where they found the planetary nebula I was looking for of WISE images. Will my computer let me run ds9 long enough to make one without crashing? Who knows. Will I be able to find the images? Who knows. What I do know is Rudy said this is the last thing I'll be doing for KPD. Don't get me wrong, I like all the imaging bit, but I am QUITE sick of powerpoints. Thoroughly ready to go back to pretty picture investigations!

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Well! I figured out how to PROPERLY set up the images that I've put in my powerpoint probably 3 different ways now. But I can feel the end approaching and the beginnings of a new project are in the air! yay! Also this challenge thing makes me feel at a disadvantage being in a different building, since there's one paper a team and I have a waaaaaaaaaay harder time collaborating all the way over here. Not cool.
Regardless, I'll find a way!
Day Twelve, Ljúktu!

Monday, July 23, 2012

The powerpoint continues! At least it's almost done. Who woulda thought something as simple as lining up a picture to compare could take so long.... or drawing a line that's a specific length... or finding a place to download a picture... Whatever the case, I've downloaded mosaics as the big excitement for the day. The first one I looked at was totally wrong and 10 times cooler looking than what I'm realling looking at, but I suppose that's okay! The mosaics are cool anyways.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Today we had a a presentation about the project for imaging science kids last year. I actually found it really interesting, and would like to get involved even though its not in either of the majors I think I'm going into. Also I had to look up pictures for a mosaic we need to make--I thought it was spitzer all over again when one file turned into 104 pictures... but it's not that bad because there's actually 4 different wavelengths worth. So! Had a heart attack but it's all good now! And I get to start my new project soon, end of the power point in sight!Pluuuus it was cool bringing a friend to work, I vote we do it every friday!

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Well, today I thoroughly examined my powerpoint a few times. Then I was informed that a new project is probably found for me and I have another paper to read! YAY (not sarcastic!)! The powerpoint was fun at first but until I'm shown how to overlay the FUSE images there's pretty much noooothing else I could do to that thing. It's quite fancified and pretty. So read I shall, and the new project (having to do with looking at xray images and how they're related to binary star systems within Planetary Nebula I believe) will hopefully commence soon!

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Sooo! The power point continues! I had a mini adventure trying to find the wavelengths for all my images--which is preeeetty much impossible for some of them btw. Buuuuut otherwise, nothing special happened today. Besides the epic nerf war....which I'm incredibly sad to hear must be called off. Le sigh. To be continued assassins, even if it must be moved elsewhere!

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Well! I was only here for about 3 hours today, so I can't particularly say I got a lot done...
What I have for my powerpoint so far was reviewed by Joel. I was actually really nervous about inaccuracies and wording and whatnot, so it was relieving to get his feedback and overall approval.
I also had an odd moment looking at my hours today. Soooomehow I looked at them wrong and thought I'd already worked about 36 hours even though I left at 12 today. I mean, I've been coming in a LITTLE early but not THAT early. Thank god I looked at it wrong, I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I had to leave at 3 one day!

Monday, July 16, 2012

Today I was informed that the Planetary Nebula we were hoping we had found had already been discovered. Whiiiiiiich sucks. A lot. But I am still making a powerpoint about what we did--thank god I'm inexplicably amused by making powerpoints.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

So! I found the fantastically beautiful Spitzer image I was looking for amongst the 600 pictures. That was probably the highlight of my day. Other than that, I basically started making a powerpoint about everything I did! Lucky me out of the 5 articles I had to read the one I need the most is the one I understood the least....

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Today I attempted to look further into an abscure astronomical infrared-detected object near our target star. I looked up the corresponding telescope, found three download links, and proceded to attempt to open them.
I found each of the three files was actually a folder, which had 4 more folders, which had 2 more folders, which had mayyyybe 25 images in them. 600(ish) images to look through? Each one so far has only been a couple pixel's worth.... except if ONE of those HAPPENS to be the right, high resolution, normal sized picture, that'd be phenomenal.
Aaaaaand then my computer died.
Note to self: NEVER forget laptop charger cord again.

So I don't really know what to say other than I get to sit all day and look at awesome pictures of stars! Actually everything I did makes me feel like I'm working on a research project which I imagine is what it'd be like if I was an ACTUAL astronomical imager so that's cool. Regardless, I like it, I like the people, and I have to be so smart everyday that I go home and get really stupid. Yay!

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

I knew this would be the hardest part--almost completely forgot and just went to bed.

I'm no less discouraged today, everything I've seen just convinces me more that what I'm doing is awesome. The more I learn the more interested I get (even if the learning process is a little slow). Pluuuuus the programs I had to download on my laptop are AWESOME.
If your bored, google stellarium and download it and play with it because its amazing and you can figure out where any star is at any point in time.
Also it is still intimidating to be around such smart people, but hopefully that'll get better as I get to know them more and what I'm working with more.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Sooo, here is my blog! I've never done this before and honestly I think this will be the hardest part to get used to for the summer.... But anywho! Scavenger hunt was fun, and evidently DOES have the reputation Bethany described, because anyone we asked for help knew what we were talking about...As for my own lab, I'm really excited! X-ray images with a gigantour white dwarf star to hopefully find something no one else has seen before? AWESOME! Although I will say it is a little intimidating to know I'm going to be surrounded by such ingenious people everyday...like everyone who basically said anything to me while being introduced....